Directions for public transport…

Last Monday was just another annual car-free day, when traffic in Warsaw was denser than usual. The possibility to take the public transport free of charge proved insufficient to induce inhabitants of Warsaw agglomeration to give up on moving around by car for that one day. I must plead I also weighed up going by bus to the underground line, but I woke up to the sight of pouring rain, the prospect of walking to the bus stop between numerous puddles has effectively put me off the idea. With some shame I also plead not to regret my decision. The traffic jam up ul. Puławska was so solid that the journey to Metro Wilanowska would have taken damn long, while in my depreciating tin I took a detour via Jeziorki, passing by the most clogged up section between ul. Karczunkowska and ul. Ludwinowska.

Over the weekend preceding the car-free day, public transport days were held. Authorities from Warsaw town hall and local public transport companies have prepared several attractions to convince some of the car-ridden sods to switch to public transport. One of such events was the train trip from Warszawa Zachodnia to Siekierki power and heating plant, through the so-called ‘coal line’, running from sidings at Okęcie, via Nowa Iwiczna, Piaseczno, Julianów, Kierszek, Konstancin, up to Siekierki. A noteworthy coverage can be found on W-wa Jeziorki. Sadly, I ran across the info on planned trips on Sunday morning when it was too late both to sign up and to reschedule my day order. The only option I had was to spot the train passing by near my house…

The venue – level crossing on ul. Mleczarska, marking the border between Piaseczno and Stara Iwiczna. The place once documented here. After over 5 years little has changed in the place. Councillors from Piaseczno have been planning to modernise ul. Mleczarska for years, yet the planning phase has lasted too long and no visible effects are observable. I heard it on the grapevine the renovation is to commence in spring next year…

The train was scheduled to pass Nowa Iwiczna around 2:10 p.m. It turned up with 25-minute delay. The sight of passenger train occupied only by coal trains is rare enough to deserve to be captured.

Koleje Mazowieckie had little choice in terms of what type of vehicle to put up for the trip, given the coal line is not electrified. This one set of the carriages is propelled by a diesel engine, hence is less eco than its counterparts running on electricity…

The train getting closer. This the first time I try out the camera in the corpo-smartphone. My private phone is Nokia 3110 Classic I’ve had since early 2008 and as long as it stays reliable, don’t feel like swapping it for a state-of-the-art phone, but I begin to discover the potential of Szajsung. The camera is up-to-the-standard, not much worse than in my compact Olympus…

As the carriages pass by, there is one other anorak (not visible on the photo), capturing the train with much more professional equipment. He turned up seconds before train came, quite probably after chasing the train from previous place of photographing…

The very idea of a trip was commendable, but putting into operation regular services running between W-wa Służewiec and Piaseczno / Julianów / Konstancin is a daydream… (Michael contends it could be a fixed for problems of commuters from those southern suburbs) I do not see it practicable for the following reasons:

1. The coal line has only one track what means the service would be a shuttle train, running back and forth between W-wa Służewiec and Konstancin.

2. The line is not electrified what means rail cars would either had to have diesel engines or it would take extra CAPEX to put up posts and wires (apart from building platforms, etc.)

3. The line was built in 1930s and since then has not undergone a thorough modernisation what means trains can run no faster than 36 kmph and implying one (or at best two) train running during rush hours which does not solve the problem of congested ul. Puławska.

4. The same line is in the winter heavily used by coal trains which run several times a day when demand for electricity and heat is the highest. Sharing one track with a passenger service is hardly imaginable…

But local election draws near, so any type of bait for voters might come in handy…

What really has to be pondered upon by folks responsible for public transport is what has to be done to persuade car-ridden commuters to use public transport. It does not take simple measures applied so far, i.e. financial incentives and disincentives. It takes a change in mindsets of the car-ridden to pull them out of their cars and to do this, someone must understand why they claim they will not give up on cars. The most often mentioned reasons are:

1. “My own car is more convenient” – sometimes the argument is hard to disprove since sometimes people travel tinned like sardines, but in general the standard of public transport has been significantly raised in the recent years. Compared to time when I commuted to high school, a huge stride has been made. Travelling by public vehicles is stress-free which I see as a big advantage. I just hop in and out, not having to worry about finding a place to park, parking meters, etc.

2. “Moving by my own car is much faster” – except for city centre, in Warsaw it is in many cases true. If I leave the car at P&R Ursynów, it takes me less than an hour to get to and from work. Late in the evening the time saving is greated and so is the comfort of not having to wait for a bus to pull out from terminus is… My journey from home to P&R takes as long as a walk to the bus stop and waiting for a bus… Not to miss a walk, I stroll between the office and the underground station which is around one kilometre.

3. “Try dropping children to school and handling some more stuff by bus” – for people having children too young to go to school on their own this is an excuse. I even noticed several people switching to public transport on days when schools are closed. This can also explain difference in traffic volume between schooldays and school holidays… How to solve this problem of logistics?

For those intent to use their cars as a matter of principle, maybe only the hard version of stick and carrot will work. Privileges for public transport and financial disincentives for private cars… The issue Warsaw is to tackle to show the superiority of public transport is to bring down fares for single journey, as the comparison of cost of moving by car for a person not having a travel-card is cheaper than buying a public transport ticket. One-per-car transport is oddly enough in many instances far less expensive. When more passengers travel in one car the disparity is even more eye-popping…

Looking ahead – in the pipeline – by the end of the year several infrastructure developments in the capital are to be completed. The last of them is the rebuilt P&R Stokłosy car park, opening scheduled on 15 January 2015 but likely to be brought forward. From my perspective it will shorten the daily distance covered by car by 3 kilometres. The one to be definitely opened before local election, due on 16 November 2014 will the central section of the second underground line, linking W-wa Wileńska Station to Rondo Daszyńskiego. Before it happens, streets closed for the period of construction are to be reopened; some wider, some narrower. This is scheduled for next Wednesday. Expect a photo coverage next weekend.

Sunday trip to Piaseczno and back

Exam period report: four down, five to go...

By the way - do you know today we have Blue Monday and I am suspiciously joyful...

So as I'm stuck in the middle of my last exam period, it might be a good idea to write something concise, approachable and upload a lot of pictures to entartain my readers (and make the post appear longer while in fact it's short).

Last Sunday I decided to make the most of sunshine (for next eight days Poland's capital suffered from deficiency of sunlight) and my new two-in-one piece of plastic (travelcard and debit card in one, issued by Citi Handlowy) with suburban ticket encoded on it and...

14:02, I approach the train station in Nowa Iwiczna. According to my estimations I should have waited for the semi-fast Radom-bound train for a few minutes. In reality, the train was running earlier and I had to run up to the platform. Instead of snapping the engine hauling three new carriages I snapped the train pulling up and the window pane leant against the shelter (above). Needless to say shelters and benches at the station are vandalised soon after the new ones are put in after a previous act of thoughtless vandalism.

Above and left: now I need some hints how to take sharp photos from a train moving at a quite high speed. I have to say travelling in double-deckers is fast and comfortable. Above: a queue of cars waiting before gates on railway crossing in Stara Iwiczna (quite busy road). Left: it's not the coal line, but a stationary coal train on a siding in Piaseczno.

To the left, another queue of cars, this time it's the railway crossing on ul. Jana Pawła II in Piaseczno. Traffic on that street is rather sparse, yet the number of cars queuing up is staggeringly high. Worth mentioning that gates on railway crossings in Poland go down long before a train comes.

Right: just five minutes after boarding the train in NI, I alighted in Piaseczno. There, before the train pulled out from the station, I managed to capture it from its splendid, grimy rear. Display at the top of last carriage shows the train's destinantion. It was the third day of thaw, then in overdrive.

Right: the station in Piaseczno, lit by mid-afternoon January sun. The building has long been due to revitalisation, now it's due in... in the future, I suppose. Mayors and councillors come and go and the station remains run-down...

Left: the same building of the station, snapped from the footpath running over the tracks. Don't expect facilities such as waiting room, toilet or ticket office. Smacks of provincial Poland - watch out for the bicycle chained to a banister or heartfelt plea of love to some Angelika...

Right: derelict sidings west to the station. I remember from early childhood those tracks have been out of use back in mid-1990s. I am baffled by the fact no one has yet ripped them. Rails and bolts could be sold for scrap and slippers could be used as input to one of incenerators, so popular in the countryside... But note that many sidings running parallel to the main line, east of it, are still in use.

Left: the platform of Piaseczno station, as dilipidated as the building of the station, yet capable of serving its purpose. On Sunday afternoon served also as a hang-out for local track-suit afficionados.

Left: looking north from the footpath, tracks run towards Warsaw and converge in the distance. Visibility on 9 January wasn't particularly good, hence a gentle mist on the horizon.

At the station I peeked at the timetable to learn a Warsaw-bound train would arrive in three minutes. After ten minutes of hanging around there to no avail I set off to the centre of Piaseczno, then caught 709 bus to Warsaw and got off the vehicle just before the border of the capital. Right: Piaseczno, ul. Raszyńska. The dismal aftermath of water freezing in crevices between the proper tarmack and new patches. When temperatures fluctuate around 0C water freezes and unfreezes and patches are blown up. Last Friday the street was patched up, but the problem remains unresolved. Come another thaw and here we go again!

Both gmina Piaseczno and gmina Lesznowola are prosperous, but Piaseczno is incredibly badly-run, especially in comparison to reasonably well-run Lesznowola. As you cross the border between them the street is properly tarmacked (no holes at all), pavement is not crooked, but apart from this the picture is not rose-coloured. Litter scatterred around the rubbish bin, butts lying in dirty snow, box belonging to Telekompromitacja Polska S.A. mangled after a car accident, crooked fence put by owners of a private nursery school...

Right: heading back home. I wonder if the place is really as dull as it sometimes seems to be. My neighbourhood is surely not the worst sort of suburbia, nevertheless, it still lacks a spirit...

Optimising the commuting

I do not remember if I made any resolutions at the beginning of the year. I somehow recall I felt it would be a good year for me and my sixth sense proved right! So this week, at the onset of autumn I made a resolution not to write about politics and I am intent on keeping away from political current affairs by the end of October. I think this will be a tough test for me, given that Mr Sane-As-Never is likely to step up his end-justifies-the-means insult campaign, paving the way to his party’s wipe-out in parliamentary elections in 2011!

In the summer commuting would have been a sheer pleasure, if it had not been for the high temperature, so frequent in the past two months. Now it is cooler, but time spent on journeys to and from work has gone up by 20% or even 50%. Right: 15 September (when I went by car for the last time), morning, queue before intersection of ul. Łabędzia and ul. Puławska. In July or August I just to had wait for the traffic light to turn green, now it queueing takes up to ten minutes. Walking and overtaking the frustrated commuters is much healthier.

The veritable hell on ul. Puławska will probably begin in mid-October, when the artery will be narrowed to only two lanes in each direction. Now, when all three lanes are occupied the traffic is almost stationary, no wonder commuters dread to think what happens when the one-kilometre-long section around the junction Puławska will become a bottleneck. I wonder how many of them will leave their cars in garages and on car parks and find an alternative way of commuting and what it would be.

Warsaw this summer was also dug up like almost never before. Ul. Emilii Plater (right), earlier paved with cobblestone has been modernised. Now drivers are able to use two lanes in each direction, bus lanes and cycling paths have been marked out, not yet opened. Construction works are still under way, new pavements for pedestrians should be laid soon, but we will have to wait a while for the DNA-shaped green belt with flowerbeds and benches designed for the space between the roads.

At the beginning of the second decade of September the most famous place in Warsaw became ul. Prosta, where the construction of second line of Warsaw underground kicked off. I took the photo to the right on 15 September around a quarter to nine in the morning. From what I have heard and seen, traffic is less dense than before ul. Prosta was closed, which sounds like a miraculous piece of news. Even streets parallel and perpendicular to ul. Prosta are less jammed than before. Everyone noticed, nobody can explain it. By the way, I stared at the green fence and wondered what it resembled. I did a double-take at the photo at home and I think I know – it brought to my mind the Berlin Wall. Am I the only one? The second photo to the right was taken after 11:00 as I walked to my office in Złote Tarasy. Ul. Prosta on its section east to Rondo Daszyńskiego was almost empty and looks like in off-peak hours this until today.

When using a car is ruled out and riding a bike is totally impractical there are two ways of getting into town left. One is a ZTM bus – they do not run as often as before the summer holidays, but still I do not have to wait for more than five minutes on a bus stop in Mysiadło for any ZTM bus to pull up. Then the journey to Metro Wilanowska terminus which starts at around 7:00 lasts around 35 minutes. It is that short just because bus drivers use the roadside as a bus lane. This means buses move much faster than cars, but journeys are more dangerous as vehicles pass lampposts and ditches by centimetres.

Actually what more can I say when I look at the traffic jam like the one right? I see a tractor with two trailers and the only thing that occurs to me is “everything except the kitchen sink”. I am of course wrong since I have not seen any horse-drawn cart on ul. Puławska yet. I can be grateful to my employer that it offers my flexible working hours. If I were to knock on at 9:00 as everybody does, my morning journeys would be around 20 minutes longer. And I still do not know which of available means of transport I should use from February 2011 when I return to work. Much will depend on the location of my office, but I am leaning towards something that does not involve using roads.

Even on the European Day without cars ul. Puławska was jammed, it was even more packed than normally, even in spite of the fact drivers were able to use public transport for free if they only had their vehicle’s registration certificates. The event was not publicised properly and, let’s face it – most people even if they knew about it would not have given up on using their cars for one day, it is a matter of habit, they cannot imagine having to travel inside a big vehicle with tens of other people. And another question that has just come up to me – how to persuade people who have company cars (company pays for the petrol and provides a car park) not to use cars? My colleagues who almost all have company cars cannot imagine commuting to the centre from Ursynów by the underground! One sales director who lives near the underground told me openly this June he had taken the metro for the first (and last) time in his life and had been really excited about the trip!!!

If not roads, then maybe rails. Unfortunately I do not have a suburban-zone ticket so I cannot board a Warsaw-bound train in Nowa Iwiczna without risking being caught by a ticket inspector. The only solution I have worked out is then to walk to Mysiadło, take any bus, ride two stops, get off and catch another bus that will take me to PKP Jeziorki and wait there for fifteen minutes for the train which according to the timetable arrives at 07:27. The journey from PKP Jeziorki to Śródmieście takes 35 minutes, so shorter than getting into the station, what actually makes the whole idea a tad absurd.

I treat it as a temporary solution because rare rail services to Warsaw are not an alternative for commuting into school where I start and finish classes at different hours and do not have flexible working hours. The thing which took my fancy on sunny mornings (if such arrangement of air pressure systems was in the winter, we would probably have –20C) spent partly on the platform of W-wa Jeziorki was the beautiful sight of all tracks coinciding in one point on the horizon, hidden in an early-autumn mist.

Commuting by train has one more advantage – given PKP Jeziorki station lies just next to the coal line, one can spot a coal train while waiting for a suburban train to town. Once I thought I would be given the pleasure of seeing and snapping one, however, the horn turned out to have been blown by a Radomiak - fast train running every morning from Radom to Warszawa, stopping only at some of the stations on its route.

Speaking about passing trains – I was tipped off that a train from Prague to Moscow runs through Nowa Iwiczna every morning around 9:20, so yesterday around 9:00 I cycled towards the level crossing in NI to snap a train. I was actually lucky to leave home earlier as the train also came earlier. I did not expect it to arrive so quickly so I stayed at the wrong, west side of the tracks which meant I could take photos against the sun only. I should have stuck around on the new P&R facility built next to the station from where I could snap the train lit by morning, late-September sun.

A pity this weekend were probably the last days of clement weather. I made the most of it by tidying up the garden on Friday, making a barbecue yesterday and washing the car today. Errr, is it a political topic that Polish parliament passed an amendment to the labour law on Friday, which declares the Epiphany (6 January) a bank holiday and takes away a paid day off which employers have to give employees to compensate for a bank holiday falling on Saturday? I should hold back from refraining on harping on about religion-related aspects of the resolution, although hitherto most people worked normally and if they wished, attended an evening mass. Now we will have a day off in the dead of winter, most people will not give a damn about going to the church or celebrating. From the comments I have read in the Internet I infer most people think the same as I do – we should have an additional bank holiday in spring (not on 10 April, I beg you) or summer when people can take a trip to the countryside, forest, cycle, have a barbecue, spend the day on their allotments. Most people have a rest on bank holidays, not celebrate them.

Meanwhile Polish president has a hard nut to crack – around a dozen Poles died tragically in a bus accident on the bypass of Berlin, Germany. Is it a reason to call national mourning as the late president would surely do?

Trust your intuition

I’d been waiting for a moment like for the last two and a half years. Around quarter past two today something prompted me to head for the railway crossing and take the camera. As I was approaching the destination, still being more than a hundred metres away from it, I heard the double horn of the train. I rushed towards and then through the platform, as late as I could I stopped and took the camera out of my pocket, turned it on and zoomed in. My hands must have been quaking after a sprint and the photo could have been sharper, I could also snap it around a half a second earlier, but all in all I managed to capture the alignment.

The “fast” train from Kraków perfectly coincided with the unit consisting of three Okęcie-bound engines. My goal was to take the picture exactly the moment the fronts of two engines were in one line, which requires a lot of precision and is a rare phenomenon. Still, it’s not what I saw on one sunny Thursday in March 2007, when the front of commuter train heading for Radom, rear of Kraków – Suwałki fast train and front of the Siekierki-bound coal train’s engine aligned in one line twenty metres north from the level crossing in NI, but I feel it under my skin that my patience will be rewarded one day.